Breakpoint Thinking

Breakpoint or break-out thinking is nothing new. It’s probably as old as humanity and part of what has made humanity one of the more successful species. It is simply the reimagining of the old to incorporate new possibilities, or even future possibilities. It was certainly the basis of Hammer and Champy’s Reengineering the Corporation back in 1993. Their definition of Business Process Reengineering revolved around using technology to enable changing the business processes in radical ways.

Another term for breakpoint thinking would be discrete improvement. That puts it as a very different tool from continuous improvement. Continuous improvement is the slow, measured change, like that often associated with geology or genetics. Discrete improvement is the radical leap and the equivalent of the punctuated equilibrium theory in geology and genetics. It’s the act of speciation that sets one organization apart from others in the field.

And that brings on the final mark and point about breakpoint thinking. It is in the organization’s primary way of doing business, of delivering services or manufacturing and delivering products to the customer, where an organization will find its breakpoint opportunities. A manufacturing company will probably not find a breakpoint opportunity in how it values assets. It may find an accounting maneuver there, but it won’t really change the way the business is done and have competitors scrambling to catch up.